Celebrity baby: Solomon Grundy's got nothing on poor little Sunday Rose
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Your support makes all the difference.Among the upper echelons of superstardom it seems the fashion for naming your child something downright ridiculous has not died down. As if Fifi Trixibelle and Peaches Honeyblossom were not bad enough, now Nicole Kidman has bestowed on her daughter the unwanted gift of the name Sunday Rose. At first this fate seems passable, until you learn that she was born on a Monday.
When it comes to naming taste, celebrities are not the people to approach for advice. From Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's daughter Apple to the disastrously named Zowie Bowie, it would be truly exciting to hear "Jane" or "John" at the next showbiz christening. Even the mockney Jamie Oliver could not be relied upon to pick a decent name. His choices, Daisy Boo and Poppy Honey, are the most saccharine of the lot.
But do parents really consider the impact such bizarre names have on the powerless child? For 19-year-old Wednesday Everitt – born on a Thursday – the jokes are more than tired. "Every time I meet someone new they have a question. 'Was your brother called Tuesday?', or worse, 'Are you a member of the Addams family?' People think they're really funny, but I've heard it so many times before."
It seems that despite all this, however, Wednesday has learnt little from her experiences growing up. "I quite like it now," she admits. "I think I'd like to call my child something different too. At the minute I'm thinking about Tiger."
Before making your child stand out, pause to consider why. Martin Skinner, a social psychologist at Warwick University, says that taking such lengths to make your child's name unique is tantamount to child abuse. He believes that the motivation has much more to do with the self-promotion of the parents than any desire to improve life for the kids. "I think it's got more to do with parental attention-seeking than consideration of the child. It's abuse: you're using them carelessly for your own ends, and its abusing the child's future."
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